 |
BOOK II.
THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
1414 — 1418.
CHAPTER II.
DEPOSITION OF JOHN XXIII.
1415
Great was the tumult in Constance when at nightfall
the flight of the Pope became known. The mob rushed to plunder the Pope’s
palace; merchants began to pack their goods and prepare to defend themselves
against a riot; most men thought that the Council had come to an end. The
prelates who had spoken against John looked on themselves as ruined; those who
were zealous for the reform of the Church saw their hopes entirely overthrown.
But Sigismund showed energy and determination in this crisis. He ordered the
burgomaster to call the citizens under arms and maintain order, and the Italian
merchants saw with wonder the ease with which quiet was restored. Next day
Sigismund, accompanied by Lewis of Bavaria, rode through the city, and with his
own mouth exhorted all men to quietness and courage; he made proclamation that
if John were fled he knew how to bring him back; meanwhile any one was free to
follow him who chose. In a general congregation he held the same language,
affirming that he would protect the Council and would labor for union even to
death: he accused Frederick of Austria of abetting the Pope’s flight, and cited
him to appear and answer for his deeds. The College of Cardinals chose three of
their number as a deputation to John to beg him not to dissolve the Council,
but appoint proctors to carry out his resignation. The same day brought a
letter from John to Sigismund. “By the grace of God we are free and in
agreeable atmosphere at Schaffhausen, where we came unknown to our son
Frederick of Austria, with no intention of going back from our promise of
abdicating to promote the peace of the Church, but that we may carry it out in
freedom and with regard to our health”. The needless lie about Frederick of
Austria was not calculated to carry much conviction of the truth of the
Pope’s promises.
Before the departure of the Cardinals, the Council
wishing to have a clear definition of their authority, so as not to depend
entirely on the influence of Sigismund, requested Gerson, as the most learned
theologian present, to preach upon the subject. Gerson’s sermon on March 23
laid down the general principles that the Church is united to its one Head,
Christ, and that a General Council, representing the Church, is the authority
or rule, guided by the Holy Ghost, ordained by Christ, which all, even the
Pope, are bound to obey; the Pope is not so far above positive law as to set
aside the decrees of a Council which can limit, though not abolish, the Pope’s
power. The representatives of the University of Paris extended these principles
of Gerson, and asserted that the Council could not be dissolved, but might
continue itself and invoke the secular arm against all who refused to obey it;
some went further than the majority would admit, and asserted that the Council
was in all points above the Pope, and was not bound to obey him.
The Cardinals now found themselves in a difficult
position; they did not wish to break with the Council, yet so long as John
professed his willingness to abdicate they had not sufficient grounds for
shaking off their allegiance to him. They thought it wiser not to be present at
Gerson’s sermon, though they were informed by Sigismund of its purport, which
the three Cardinal deputies, accompanied by the Archbishop of Rheims,
communicated to the Pope at Schaffhausen. Meanwhile John had written letters to
the University of Paris, the King of France, and the Duke of Orleans,
explaining the reasons of his flight. In them he artfully tried to play
upon the hatred of the French to the English, and on the French King’s jealousy
of Sigismund. He complained that the English and Germans had leagued themselves
together to carry matters with a high hand, and that Sigismund had tried to
make himself master of the Council; for these reasons he had retired to
Schaffhausen, but was ready to accomplish his abdication, and wished to journey
through France on his way to meet Benedict. These letters were written to no
purpose, as they were only referred back to the Council. On the same day John
sent to Constance a peremptory order to all the officers of the Curia to join
him at Schaffhausen within six days, under pain of excommunication. Seven
Cardinals left Constance next day, and went to Schaffhausen, as did the
greater part of the Curia.
On March 25 the Archbishop of Rheims returned with
letters from the Pope to Sigismund, saying that he had gone to Schaffhausen
merely for change of air, not through any fear of danger. He offered to appoint
as proctors to accomplish his resignation, in case Gregory and Benedict also
resigned, the whole body of Cardinals, or three of them, and four prelates, one
out of each nation, of whom three should be empowered to act. But the Council
was full of suspicion of John and of his Cardinals; it resolved to go its own
way according to the principles laid down by Gerson, and to pay no further heed
to the Pope. So strong was the Council that it refused to consider the
reasonable difficulties of the Cardinals, who felt themselves bound to hold by
John until he openly set himself in opposition to the Council. The Cardinals,
like all moderate men who try to guide their conduct by ordinary rules in
extraordinary crises, were regarded with suspicion by both sides. They were not
summoned to the assembly of nations held on March 26 to prepare decrees which
were to be submitted to a session of the Council on the same day; the
resolutions were only handed to them to read over before the session of the
Council opened. They demanded that the session be deferred till the return of
their envoys from the Pope; they were told that Sigismund and the Council were
weary of subterfuges.
They were in sore perplexity; a wave of revolutionary
spirit threatened to sweep away Pope and Cardinals at the same time. It seemed
to some sufficiently dreadful that a session of the Council should be held
without the Pope; though for this at least the precedent of the Council of Pisa
could be claimed. But it was an unheard-of innovation that the Council should
meet in spite of Pope and Cardinals; the exclusive aristocracy which had been
willing to weaken the monarchical system of the Church found that its own
position was almost lost as well. Some of the Cardinals at once retired to
John; many thought it wise to pretend illness and watch how events turned out;
only two determined to make a last effort to save the dignity of the Cardinals
from the violence of the Council. Peter d'Ailly and Zabarella presented themselves at the session and succeeded
in obtaining the respect due to their rank. D'Ailly celebrated the mass and
presided; Zabarella read the decrees, which affirmed
that the Council had been duly summoned to Constance, was not dissolved by the
Pope’s flight, and ought not to be dissolved till the Schism was ended and the
Church reformed; meanwhile the Council would not be transferred to another
place without its own assent, nor should prelates leave the Council till its
work was done. A loud cry of “Placet” followed the
reading of these decrees. Then Zabarella went on to
read a protest in behalf of himself and D'Ailly, saying that so long as John
labored for the peace of the Church they must hold by him; they could have
wished that this session had been deferred, but, as the Council determined
otherwise, they thought it right to be present, in the hope that what was done
would be confirmed by the Pope. The skillful and courageous behavior of the two
Cardinals saved the prestige of the Sacred College, and prevented an
irrevocable breach between the Council and the old traditions of the Church,
which would have strengthened the hands of John XXIII.
On the same evening the envoys of the Cardinals
returned from Schaffhausen, and next day, March 27, before a general
congregation, reported the Pope’s offer to appoint the Cardinals as his
proctors, so that two of them could carry out his resignation, even against his
will; he promised not to dissolve the Council till there was a perfect union of
the Church; he demanded security for his own person and indemnity for the Duke
of Austria. But the Council was too suspicious of John to trust to any fair
promises, nor did the attitude of the Cardinals who had come from Schaffhausen
tend to confirm their confidence. In the discussion that followed some of them
ventured to hint that the Pope’s withdrawal had dissolved the Council; they
were angrily answered that the Pope was not above the Council, but subject to
it. The suspicions entertained against the Cardinals were increased by the fact
that a copy of John’s summons to his Curia to attend him at Schaffhausen had
been posted on the doors of the Cathedral of Constance, clearly at the
instigation of some of the Cardinals who had returned from visiting the Pope.
The publication next day, March 25, of a prolongation of the period within
which they were bound to leave Constance, only increased the irritation of the
Council. Congregations of the nations set to work
busily to frame decrees establishing the authority of the Council without the
Pope; and the Cardinals, in alarm, saw the opinions of the most advanced
advocates of the reforming party being adopted with enthusiasm by the entire
Council. In vain they endeavored to arrest the current of opinion by offering
new concessions on behalf of the Pope; Sigismund should be joined as proctor to
the Cardinals, and the summons to the Curia to leave Constance should be
entirely withdrawn. It was too late; the distrust of John XXIII and the
Cardinals was too deep-seated and had been too well deserved. Under the
excitement of the last few days the Council had risen to a sense of its own
importance, and was determined to assert itself in spite of Pope or Cardinals.
John XXIII, who was kept well informed of what was
passing, grew alarmed at the turn which affairs were john taking. Before the
Council had asserted its power he thought it wise to remove himself to a more
secure spot than Schaffhausen. The position of Frederick of Austria seemed
precarious. The Swiss Confederates were preparing to attack him; many of his
own vassals renounced their allegiance; Schaffhausen would not be safe against
an attack. So on March 29, on a rainy day, John left Schaffhausen. Outside the
gate he paused, and caused a notary to draw up a protest that all his oaths,
vows, and promises made at Constance had been drawn from him through fear of
violence; then he galloped off to the strong castle of Lauffenberg,
some thirty miles higher up the Rhine. He did not take with him even the
Cardinals who were at Schaffhausen, and they returned ignominiously to
Constance, where they were received with decorous contempt. John had now thrown
off the veil and justified the suspicions of his adversaries. His policy of
chicanery and prevarication had been baffled by the resolute attitude of the
Council, and he was driven at last to try the chances of open war.
The Cardinals still desperately strove to check the
alarming advance of the pretensions of the Council. They saw, and saw rightly,
that an unmodified assertion of the supremacy of a General Council over the
Pope meant the introduction of a new principle into the existing government of
the Church. They threatened to absent themselves from the session to be held on
March 30, unless the articles to be proposed were modified. Sigismund offered
to lay their views before the nations, and gave them vague hopes that some
slight changes might be made. They prevailed on the French ambassadors and the
deputies of the University to join with them in begging Sigismund to lay aside
his intention of making war on Frederick of Austria; but Sigismund was
inexorable. After much anxious deliberation all the Cardinals who were in
Constance, except Peter d'Ailly and the Cardinal of Viviers, presented themselves at the session held on March
30. Cardinal Orsini presided; Sigismund appeared in royal robes, accompanied by
several lords and about two hundred fathers. The decrees were given to the
Cardinal Zabarella to read. They set forth that “This
Synod, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, forming a General Council
representing the Catholic Church Militant, has its power immediately from
Christ, and all men, of every rank and dignity, even the Pope, are bound to
obey it in matters pertaining to the faith and the extirpation of the present
schism”. — So far Zabarella read, but seeing that the
words went on, — “and general reformation of the Church of God in head and
members”, he paused, and saying that they were contrary to general opinion,
omitted them, and passed on to the next decrees, declaring that the Pope could
not dissolve the Council, and that all acts done by him to the detriment of the
Council should be null and void. The Cardinals were willing to admit the
supremacy of the Council over the Pope for the immediate purpose of ending the
Schism, but they were not willing that it should extend to the matter which
more closely concerned themselves, that of the reformation of the Church. In
the tumult that followed his omission of the words of the decree it was not
sure how much he read afterwards. The session broke up in confusion, and the
wrath of the Council against the Cardinals blazed higher. A pamphlet, written
by some German prelate, attacked them in no measured language. They had been in
league with the Pope against the Council; many of them had followed him to
Schaffhausen, and had only returned because they were not satisfied with the
cookery there. Their character might be seen by that of the Pope whom they
elected — a tyrant, a homicide, a Simoniac, steeped
in unmentionable vices. If they chose him as being the best among their number,
what was to be thought of the rest?
Yet the Council behaved with dignity. It named
deputies to confer with Zabarella, but it refused to
reconsider the decrees themselves. On April 6 another session was held, in
which the former decrees were again submitted and approved, on being read by
the Bishop of Posen, with two additions — that any one refusing to obey the
decrees of the Council might be punished, and that John XXIII had enjoyed full
liberty while at Constance. This last decree was an answer to John’s plea on
leaving Schaffhausen, that he had fled from Constance through fear of violence.
On this point his cunning had overreached itself, as the moral force which a
plea of coercion might have possessed was lost by his first excuse that he left
for the sake of change of air. He published a further allegation on April 7
that he fled lest the obvious violence to which he was exposed at Constance
might afford a pretext to Gregory and Benedict for withdrawing their offers
of resignation. John was much too plausible, and failed entirely to see that he
could not establish his moral character in the face of Europe by putting
forward pleas which no one could profess to believe.
John was soon driven to feel his helplessness. On
April 6 the Council besought Sigismund to bring back the Pope to Constance. On
April 7 the ban of the Empire was issued against Frederick of Austria, and the
excommunication of the Council was pronounced against the disturber of its
peace. The hope of booty made many willing to carry out the behests of the
King and the Council. Frederick, Burkgraf of
Nurnberg, led an army into Swabia, where strong towns fell before him.
Schaffhausen, too weak to endure a siege, at once submitted to Sigismund. Another
army was gathered from Bavaria and overran the Tyrol. Still Frederick of
Austria might have held out securely if the Swiss had maintained neutrality, as
at first they intended to do in accordance with a fifty years’ peace which they
had made with Austria in 1412. But Sigismund urged that an engagement was not
binding in the case of an excommunicated man; he held before them the prospect
of increase of territory at Frederick’s expense; he promised to make no peace
with Frederick that did not guarantee their safety. The fathers of the Council
added a threat of excommunication if they did not lend their aid to the cause
of the Church. Then the scruples of the Swiss were overcome; they poured their
levies into the Austrian possessions and advanced victoriously to the walls of
Baden. On another side the Pfalzgraf Lewis overran
Alsace; Frederick of Austria, in Freiburg, where he had fled for safety,
received nothing but messages of calamity. John XXIII himself went to Freiburg
on April 10, and was convinced that he could gain aid from the Duke of
Burgundy. He strove in vain to encourage Frederick to hold out till succors
came; he placed all his treasure at Frederick’s disposal, promised him the aid
of Italian condottieri, held out hopes of help from Venice and Milan, if
Frederick would but resist for a time. But Frederick’s spirit was broken; he
thought only of making his peace on any terms with Sigismund, and regarded
John’s person as a valuable pledge by which he might appease the storm
which he had drawn upon his own head.
Meanwhile the Council went its way with stately
decorum. On April 17 a general session approved a letter addressed to all the
kings and princes of Europe, recounting the circumstances of the Pope’s flight,
dwelling upon his entire freedom of action at Constance, lamenting the fortunes
of the Church under such an unworthy shepherd, announcing the intention of the
Council to send envoys to demand John’s return. The Council appointed as its
envoys Cardinals Filastre and Zabarella,
and drew up a document for John to sign, appointing proctors to carry out his
resignation; John was to be required within two days to return to Constance, or
take up his abode at Ulm, Ravensburg, or Basel, till
his resignation was accomplished. In this session also the ill-concealed hatred
against the Cardinals found expression in a proposal to exclude them from the
sittings of the Council. A memoir, probably written by Dietrich of Niem, was read, arguing that if the object of the Council
were the reformation of its head and members — i.e., the Pope and the Cardinals — the Cardinals ought not to be
judges in their own cause; by their election of John XXIII they had
sufficiently scandalized the Church, and had shown themselves ready to aid him
in thwarting the Council. No conclusion was come to on this point, but we see
how high feeling must have run by the fact that the Council found it necessary
to forbid the publication of libelous or defamatory documents under pain
of excommunication.
Next day, April 18, the Cardinals presented a series
of propositions affirming the authority and headship of the Roman Church over a
General Council. Even over the Universal Church the Roman Church, or the Pope,
has authority immediately from God as much as a General Council; indeed, the Roman
Church forms the principal part of a General Council, over which the Pope
presides, and in his absence the Cardinals; without the assent of the Roman
Church, nothing could be decided by a Council. The theologians set themselves
to answer this document clause by clause, but we see that they were hard
pressed in doing so. Throughout the discussions of the last thirty years the
arguments in favor of a Council had owed their force to the Schism and its
evils had been founded on a plea of present necessity. But the arguments
against schismatic Popes lost much of their power when applied to the united
College of Cardinals. The advocates of the Council had been enabled to set up
the claims of the Universal Church against those of the Roman Church, because
the unity of the Roman Church was destroyed by the doubt as to its head. But no
one ventured to impugn the validity of the position of the College of
Cardinals; and when they asserted themselves as the rightful representatives of
the Roman Church, and took their stand upon its privileges, the theologians of
the Council were in a strait. They answered the pleas of the Cardinals
hesitatingly, rather carping at the expressions used than venturing to attack
the conclusions. The Church of Rome, they admit, is head of all the Churches,
yet not for the sake of nourishing schism; there is a difference between a
Council summoned to decide matters of faith and one summoned to extinguish a
schism caused by the Cardinals themselves; whatever power the Cardinals might
have in the first case, they ought not in the second case to judge their
own cause. We see in this the weakness of the Conciliar argument. Taking
advantage of a disputed succession in the Papal monarchy, it attempted to
raise, in a time of anarchy, a cry for a representative system in the
government of the Church. Against the distracted monarchy it could make good
its position; but when the nobles of the Court asserted in their own defence the principles on which the monarchy was founded,
the advocates of the representative system did not dare directly to dispute
them. The Council did not decree the exclusion of the Cardinals; but
practically they were rendered powerless by the fact that the conclusions of
the assemblies of the nations were only handed to them a short while before the
sessions of the Council, so that they had no time to influence the final
decisions. On May 2 they demanded the power to organize themselves like the
nations, urging that the English nation was only represented by twenty. The
Council, however, refused, and bade them each join their own nation. Finally,
at the session on May 25, we find the College of Cardinals ranking by the side
of the nations, though the understanding between them was never cordial.
On April 19 the Cardinals Filastre and Zabarella left Constance to bear the Council’s
proposals to John XXIII. They found that he had left Freiburg for Breisach, still holding to his plan of drawing nearer to
the territory of the Duke of Burgundy, who he hoped would send an escort to
conduct him to Avignon. But, with the fate of Frederick of Austria before his
eyes, John of Burgundy hesitated to incur the hostility of the Council. John
XXIII remained at Breisach, where the envoys found
him on April 23, and laid before him the Council’s demands. John promised to
answer them next day; but next day they learned with astonishment that he had
fled in the early dawn to Neuenburg. The envoys
accordingly retraced their steps to Freiburg, where, to their surprise, they
again found the Pope on April 27.
John XXIII’s course was now run. Frederick of Austria
had taken the first steps towards reconciliation with Sigismund, and knew that
for this purpose he must be prepared to deliver over John to his foes. John was
accordingly summoned by Frederick to take refuge in Freiburg for greater
safety, and with a heavy heart was compelled to obey. There he had to listen
again to the demands of the envoys of the Council, and sullenly answered that
he would send his proctors in a few days. On the return of the legates to
Constance, April 29, it was resolved to cite John to appear. Next day Frederick
of Austria came humbly to Constance to beg Sigismund’s forgiveness, and John’s
proctor, bearing his demands and reservations, was not thought worthy of
notice.
The Council was now omnipotent, and determined to give
John XXIII no quarter. In a session on May 2 a citation was issued summoning
him to answer charges of heresy, schism, simony, maladministration, waste of
Church property, and scandals caused to the Church by his life and character.
On May 4 the citation was affixed to the gates of Constance, and next day the
humiliation of Frederick of Austria before Sigismund gave the Council a
foretaste of its triumph. In the refectory of the Franciscan monastery Sigismund
sat on his throne surrounded by deputies of the four nations and the
ambassadors of the Italian States who were present in Constance. The Duke of
Austria was introduced as a humble suppliant by Frederick of Nurnberg and Lewis
of Bavaria, who, in his behalf, supplicated for pardon, and submitted his lands
and person to the royal grace. Sigismund asked Frederick if he assented to this
prayer; on bended knee, with broken voice, Frederick repeated his request for
mercy. Sigismund raised him from his knees, saying, “I am sorry that you have
brought this upon yourself”. Then Frederick swore fealty to Sigismund, resigned
his lands into Sigismund’s hands to hold at his good pleasure, promised to
bring back Pope John to Constance and to remain as hostage till his promises
were fulfilled. The heart of Sigismund swelled with pride at his triumph;
turning to the Italian ambassadors, he exclaimed, “You know what mighty men the
Dukes of Austria are; see now what a German King can do”. It was a pardonable
boast, and Sigismund deserved a triumph for his skill in seizing the
opportunity of raising the dignity of the Empire on the weakness of the Church.
The Council did not entirely trust to Frederick’s
power of bringing John to Constance. On May 9 the Burggraf Nurnberg, with 300 armed men, escorted to Freiburg envoys of the Council who
begged John to return. John put a good face on the matter, and professed his
readiness, but took no steps beyond sending a secret commission to the
Cardinals d'Ailly, Filastre,
and Zabarella to act as proctors in his defense.
After some hesitation they refused to act on his behalf; and the Council, in
session on May 13, ruled that the citation had been addressed to him in person,
and that he was bound to appear himself. Next day he was condemned for
contumacy, and was declared suspended from the Papal office. Commissioners were
appointed to examine witnesses and draw up charges against John, and they were
not long in discharging their office. A terrible list of seventy articles was
drawn out against John, though these were for very shame reduced to fifty-four
before they were laid before the Council. They covered John’s whole life and
left him no shred of virtue, no vestige of reputation. From the days of his
youth he was steeped in vice, of evil disposition, lying, disobedient to
his parents; each step in his career had been gained by underhand means; he had
poisoned his predecessor, had despised the rites of religion like a pagan, was
an oppressor of the poor, a robber of churches, stained by carnal indulgences,
a vessel of every kind of sin. Besides these general terms of abuse the
specific charges against him range from incest to an offer to sell the
Florentines the sacred relic of the head of John the Baptist, belonging to the
Monastery of S. Silvestro at Rome. Amidst this overwhelming mass of accusations
there is only one thing of which we feel convinced, that John certainly had the
power of inspiring deep animosity.
Meanwhile John himself was brought by Frederick of
Nurnberg to Radolfszell, eight miles from Constance.
He refused to go any further; his spirit was broken, and he was only anxious to
escape the shame of a personal humiliation. He was accordingly left at Radolfszell strictly guarded. On May 20 envoys of the
Council announced to him his suspension from the Papacy, and demanded the
insignia of his office, the seal and the fisherman’s ring. John submitted with
tears and expressions of contrition. On May 25 the articles against him were
laid before the Council, with a statement of the number and nature of the
witnesses on each head. They received the solemn approval of a proctor
nominated by each nation. The Council was terribly unanimous; even the contest
with the Cardinals was laid aside, and the College at last was allowed to
organize itself as a nation, for we find the Cardinal of Viviers acting as proctor to convey the assent of the College. Five Cardinals were sent
to announce to John that his deposition was imminent. John did not trust
himself to reply in words, but handed them a writing, in which he declared that
he was willing to submit to the Council in all things, and would not object to
its decision, whatever it might be; he only asked them to respect his
honor and person.
The Council was gratified by this unqualified
submission, but thought it well to take all precautions. Next day five
commissioners were sent to carry to John the articles on which he was accused,
and summon him to answer in person if he thought fit. John refused to read the
articles, and repeated his previous answer, that he submitted to the Council,
which could not err; in its infallibility was his one defense; he only asked
that his honor be spared as much as possible. He sent a letter to Sigismund,
“his only hope after God”, reminding him of their past relations, begging him
“by the bowels of compassion of Jesus Christ to be mindful of your plighted
word, by which you gave us hope”, and entreating him to use his influence with
the Council on the side of mercy. John’s submission disarmed the extreme
bitterness felt against him, and the sentence of deprivation pronounced against
him on May 29 was couched in much milder terms than the articles would have
warranted. It set forth the evils with which John’s flight from Constance had
threatened the unity of the Church, and then proceeded, “Our Lord Pope John was
moreover a notorious simoniac, a waster of the goods and rights not only of the Roman Church but others, an evil
administrator both of the spiritualities and
temporalities of the Church, causing notorious scandal to the Church of God and
Christian people by his detestable and unseemly life and manners, both before
and since his accession to the Papacy”. In spite of frequent monitions he
persisted in his evil course, and therefore is now deposed as “unworthy, useless,
and harmful”; all Christians are freed from their allegiance, and are forbidden
to recognize him any longer as Pope. After the deposition of John, care was
taken for the future by a decree that no new election should be made, in case
of vacancy, without the express consent of the Council, and that none of the
three contending claimants should be re-elected. A solemn procession of the
whole Council round the city of Constance celebrated this final assurance of
their triumph. The deposed Pope, now called once more by his former name of Baldassare Cossa, was brought for safe keeping into the
strong castle of Gottlieben, close to Constance. But
there was a suspicion that some discontented spirits had again opened
correspondence with him; and Sigismund handed him over to the custody of the Pfalzgraf Lewis, who held the office of Protector of the
Council. Lewis sent him to the Castle of Heidelberg, where he remained so long
as the Council sat, attended only by Germans, whose language he did not
understand and with whom he communicated only by signs.
Thus fell John XXIII: undefended and, it would seem,
unpitied; nor has posterity reversed the verdict of the Council. Yet it is
difficult not to reel that John had hard measure dealt to him in the
exceptional obloquy which has been his lot. Elected to the Papacy in return for
his signal services in the Council of Pisa, he was ignominiously deposed by the
Council which claimed to be a continuation of that of Pisa. Here, as elsewhere,
the revolution swallowed up its own child, and John’s character has met with
the fate which always befalls those whom everyone is interested to malign and
no one is interested to defend. In his early career he established his
reputation for courage and political sagacity by his administration of Bologna;
but his capacities were those of a soldier of fortune and few looked upon him
seriously as a priest. As the chief man in North Italy he had it in his power
to dispose of the fortunes of the Council of Pisa, and the Cardinals could
scarcely help rewarding him for his services by the gift of the Papacy. But
in his exalted position everything went amiss with John, and his entire
want of success in Italian affairs compelled him, sorely against his will, to
appeal to the sympathies of Christendom. His previous training in a life of
military adventure made him light-hearted in running into danger; his entire
ignorance of the religious feeling of Europe made him utterly unable to cope
with his danger when once it gathered round him. It was one thing to play off
against one another condottieri generals and win by trickery the towns of Forli
and Faenza; it was another thing to guide the deliberations of an assembly of
theologians profoundly convinced of their own powers. John had neither learning
nor moral character to enable him to hold his own in the face of the Council.
He had nothing but intrigue, which he managed so ill as to make it impossible
for anyone to hold by him through respect for the Papal dignity. Betrayed first
by Sigismund and then by Frederick of Austria, he lost all self-command and
self-confidence. When force of character rests neither upon moral nor
intellectual principles, it rapidly decays under adverse circumstances. When
John found that his first endeavors to manage the Council were unsuccessful he
began to lose his nerve and then blundered more and more lamentably. The
Council took advantage of each of his mistakes, and drove him remorselessly
from point to point; John contested each point in detail with the weapons of
mean subterfuge, and thus entirely ruined his prestige in the eyes of Europe.
Everything went against him, and when he fell there was no one interested to
save him or even to give him shelter. Everyone felt that such a man never ought
to have been elected Pope. He was nothing more nor less than an Italian
military adventurer, and his camp life had been scandalous enough to make any
stories against him sound credible.
Yet it was not to the moral indignation caused by his
character that John XXIII owed his fall, but to the policy of Sigismund and the
Council, who were bent upon restoring unmistakably the outward unity of the
Church. When John threw difficulties in the way of their plan of a common
abdication of the three contending claimants of the Papacy, a civil war followed,
in which victory declared against John. His rebellion was signally punished,
and it was necessary not only to depose him, but to render it impossible for
anyone to revive his claims. John had few friends, and they could do nothing
for him. The Council was omnipotent, and suddenly applied to him a moral
standard which would have condemned many of his predecessors; at Constance
every tongue and pen was turned against John. A calm Italian observer blamed
John for trusting himself to a Council composed of turbulent spirits who wished
to turn the world upside down. He admired his versatility and capacity; in his
youth a student, he afterwards distinguished himself greatly as a general and
administrator; unfortunately he meddled in ecclesiastical matters which he did
not understand; and his ability was forgotten in the contemplation of his
misfortunes. This seems to have been the prevailing opinion in Italy. Cosimo dei Medici, who was not
likely to befriend an utterly worthless man, retained both affection and
respect for the deposed Baldassare Cossa, and gave
him shelter in his last days. Still it must be admitted that, whatever good
qualities John possessed, they were useless to him as Pope, and his ignorance
and heedlessness of the spiritual duties of his sacred office gave the Council
a handle against him. No remorse was felt in making him a victim to the zeal
for the union of the distracted Church.
|
